What Would Philip Roth Do?

In a blog post at Critical Mass, Ellen Heltzel explores Ann Patchett’s decisions about which author appearances to accept based on the answer to the question “What would Philip Roth do?” This test is a useful “measuring stick for Patchett” because Roth is known to be “too big and fine to suffer fools or silly solicitations gladly.”

Heltzel’s point is that the test isn’t working very well for Patchett, who recently shared the stage with Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) at the Portland Arts & Lectures series where the two women “chatt[ed] in front of hundreds of people like two girls at a slumber party.” For Heltzel, appearances like this are one reason why women writers aren’t taken as seriously as their male counterparts:

For women writers who think they still aren’t taken as seriously as the men in their field, here was Exhibit A for why that might occur: a coupla chicks sitting around talking while an audience pays $26.50 a seat to hear them indulge in a bout of self- and mutual admiration. … [Toni] Morrison would flick off such public familiarity as easily as she would a bad sentence.

Heltzel contrasts the Patchett/Gilbert appearance—where the two women “sat with feet tucked underneath them in two oversized upholstered chairs”—with an earlier appearance by Joyce Carol Oates at the same event. By standing at a lectern and “exud[ing] competence and demand[ing] respect,” Oates “served herself and the cause of literature.”

On top of uninspiring appearances, Heltzel questions whether inherent stylistic differences between male and female writers may fuel the gender gap. Adopting the viewpoint expressed by Lauren Groff (author of The Monsters of Templeton, a finalist for the Orange Prize for New Writers), Heltzel notes that “awards go to fiction that is written from the point of view of a man, concerns war, and has very short sentences—Hemingwayesque, as it were.” Even accepting Haltzel’s scurrilous gender stereotype regarding writing style, she doesn’t provide any support for her conclusion that we respect a Hemingwayesque style more than a more ornate style. In fact, several recent award winners refute her point (e.g., The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (winner of the 2008 Costa Book of the Year) and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)).

And if one unsupported gender-based stereotype isn’t enough, Heltzel suggests another one—subject matter:

Fiction that deals with the big topics of the day, not the domestic sphere, is more readily imbued with the gravitas of great literature—pace War and Peace, not to mention Don DeLillo.

I suppose Heltzel is implying that women writers are more interested in “the domestic sphere” than male writers, another conclusion that doesn’t hold up for contemporary literary fiction (although it might fairly be applied to 18th and 19th century fiction). These days, the domestic sphere is fertile ground for both male and female writers.

Near the end of her post, Heltzel hits upon a valid point:

Another factor working against women writers is the distractions. … Women still handle the bulk of the job of raising children, not to mention caring for spouses, parents, and friends. They do more housework.

As much as we might hate to admit it, the “distraction factor” likely reduces the quantity of output of some female writers (though certainly not all).

Patchett’s “What would Philip Roth do?” test is not a bad idea, but no matter how faithfully she applies the test, it won’t turn her—or any other female writer looking for more respect—into Philip Roth (whose style, by the way, is not Hemingwayesque).